Geoffrey Norman at NRO offers a delightfully sarcastic discussion of the move by a couple of Michigan state senators to use the BCS title game controversy as an opportunity for political grandstanding. “Keep your hands off our football,” is Norman’s message to government. In point of fact, however, there is a long history of government intervention in American sports. An early and famous example is the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision granting Major League Baseball an exemption from antitrust laws. The...

Stephen Grabill delivers his address at today’s Lord Acton Lecture Series Event Stephen J. Grabill, Acton’s Research Scholar in Theology, delivered an address today based upon his new book which explores plex and often-overlooked relationship between Protestantism and natural law. In Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics, Grabill calls upon Christian ethicists, theologians, and laypersons to take another look at this vital element in the history of Christian ethical thought. He appeals to Reformation and post-Reformation era theologians...

In a recent open letter to immigrants to the United States, Jennifer Roback Morse expands on the words of Emma Lazarus engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus wrote: “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.” Morse goes one step further, asking immigrants to give their hearts as well. What Morse explains is that America values immigrants. In fact, almost all Americans are descended from immigrants. But a trend that Morse...

In this week’s Acton Commentary, Anthony Bradley takes a look at the Spanish economy as it faces a “dilemma,” as he puts it, “simultaneously needing immigrants and seeking to curb them.” Bradley also notes that “institutions like marriage and family seem silly to many Spaniards.” As APM’s Marketplace reports, shifting trends in Spain might claim another Spanish institution, the siesta. A variety of factors, including petition with labor forces in other nations, are leading some to question the viability of...

I can’t offer a wholesale endorsement, but it’s a critique worth a hearing…give it a watch. See here for Acton’s answer to the One Campaign. HT: eucharism ...

Rick Ritchie responds to this New Atlantis article by Peter Lawler, “Is the Body Property?” in a recent post on Daylight. Lawler discusses the increasingly broad push modify the human body, especially in the context of organ sales. Lawler writes of “the creeping libertarianism that characterizes our society as a whole. As we understand ourselves with ever greater consistency as free individuals and nothing more, it es less clear why an individual’s kidneys aren’t his property to dispose of as...

Seth Godin wants to know. ...

“Christian consumption has gone far beyond the book as millions use their buying power to reinforce their faith and mitment to the munity,” reads an article in the current edition of USAToday (HT: Zondervan>To the Point) According to the piece, “Nearly 12% of Americans spend more than $50 a month on religious products, and another 11% spend $25 to $29, according to a national survey of 1,721 adults by Baylor University, out in September.” There has been a great deal...

In December of last year I had a great back and forth on the topic of Christian dominionism with fellow green blogger Elsa at Greener Side. A friend wrote recently asking about those posts and my take on dominionism specifically. After letting him know we were safely in the anti-dominionism camp, I said I thought there were more folks in progressive/secular circles that saw Christians as dominionists than Christians who actually bought into this trash. I liked his response: It...

The January 2007 issue of First Things features a lengthy review of Stephen Grabill’s new book on Protestant natural law thinking (no link to the review, unfortunately). J. Daryl Charles, an assistant professor at Union University, has this to say about Grabill’s Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Eerdmans, 2006): Grabill’s examination of theological ethics in the Protestant Reformed mainstream is pelling, and it represents a shot across the bow of theological ethics, as it were. Protestants for...